The Twenty-First Century: Leadership and Public Values

This chapter describes a partnership launched by the author between two world-class universities (Duke and the University of Cape Town) to help build a culture of ethical and effective leadership in southern Africa and among communities of color in the United States. It showcases the contributions of some of the graduates of the program who have gone on to high-profile leadership roles in their communities and countries as mayors, private foundation executives, members of Parliament, senior executives in business, and a college president.

This chapter brings the narrative to a conclusion by identifying a lexicon of public values that have shaped and guided the author’s engagement in public life, whether as a social activist, a business executive, or a government official, or in the many other activities that have challenged him to integrate values into his work. Drawing from personal experience as well as the work of moral theologians, economists, and philosophers, the author goes beyond the microethics that build character to argue for a set of social values that he describes as the macroethics required for a complex, interdependent world.